Red ammannia, also known as purple or long-leaved ammannia, is a decumbent to erect annual growing to about 3' tall but often shorter, single-stemmed or branched at the base.  The leaves are opposite, sessile, linear to narrowly lanceolate, 3/4" to 2" long, and auricled at the base.  The flowers appear in the leaf axils and are very small, approximately 1/8" across, with an urn-shaped hypanthium, four sepals, four obovate, deep rose-purple petals, 4-7 exserted stamens with bright yellow anthers, and a single pistil.  The fruit is a capsule about an 1/8" long.  Red ammannia blooms from May to October, and is an occasional inhabitant of wet places, drying ponds, and lake and creek margins below 1000' in cismontane Southern California.  It also ranges to the eastern part of the United States, Central America and the Atlantic coast of Brazil. These pictures were taken at the seasonal pond at Rocky Oaks in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Ammannia 2) coccinea.
Pronunciation: am-AN-ee-a ko-SIN-ee-a.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.